In the field of dress-making and embroidery, chalk, chalk pencil or chalk paper is used by designers to draw cutting lines or designs on cloth. Unlike the case of sketching on paper or pattern paper, the drawing of lines and/or patterns on cloth is usually effected with a chalky drawing element such as a chalk pencil or chalk paper, instead of ordinary pencils or color markers. Lines or patterns drawn with such chalky drawing elements must be capable of easy erasure after cutting or embroidering.
Coloring compositions conventionally used for line- or pattern-drawing elements are generally composed of an inorganic filler such as clay incorporated with a pigment or dye such as titanium dioxide, Madder lake, ultramarine, cadmium yellow or the like. A chalk, or more precisely, tailor's chalk is manufactured by solidifying such coloring composition in the form of a block, a chalk pencil by surrounding a core of the composition with a wooden stick holder, and a chalk paper by applying the composition onto paper or like sheet.
At an intermediate stage of the drsss-making or embroidering work when erasure of cutting lines and/or patterns drawn by designers on cloth with such a conventional coloring composition is required, such erasing work is done simply by a physical means using a brush. Using such a process, however, perfect erasure of the drawn lines or patterns is extremely difficult and a small amount of the coloring composition is usually retained on cloth. When cloth is finally treated with a steam iron or steam press, the residual coloring composition strongly adheres to cloth and causes stain of the finished dress or embroidery, thus seriously damaging commercial value of the resulting goods. In the field of dress-making and embroidery, therefore, there is a great demand for development of an improved coloring composition which can be easily erased after use.